Yseut Haskell, a pretty if mediocre young actress whose real talent was destroying men's lives, is found shot to death in a college room only a few yards from the office of the erratic Oxford don Gervase Fen. It appears no one could have killed her but the lady herself, though a great many might have been unable to resist the same opportunity. The victim was wearing an unusual ring—a reproduction of a piece in the British Museum featuring a golden fly. Is it this that prompts our impetuous Fen to announce that, not only was it not a suicide, he also has deduced the identity of the murderer? Otherwise known in real life as the composer Bruce Montgomery, Edmund Crispin produced, in the mid-20th century, a series of nine detective novels and two story collections starring one of the most remarkable sleuths of the genre, Oxford don Gervase Fen, who makes his unforgettable first appearance in this 1944 gem. Cherubic, naive, volatile, and entirely delightful, as one of Crispin's own characters describes him, Fen wanders the earth taking a genuine interest in things and people unfamiliar.

"A classic detective story and a ludicrous literary farce."—Guardian (London)